1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to collapsible and re-expandable modular racks. In particular, the invention relates to modular wine racks and methods to make such racks.
2. Description of Related Art
Wine racks have been known for years. However, most wine stores, particularly smaller stores, do not sell wine racks. Wine racks take up too much retail space to be worth the shelf space in a wine store. What is needed is a collapsible and re-expandable wine rack that can be collapsed for shipment and storage in compact form and then expanded for display in the wine store. Then, the wine store would only need to display one or two expanded wine racks since additional racks could be easily expanded as the display models are sold.
Life Style Products of Vermont sells a 12 bottle wine rack that has wooden rails and dowels inserted in bores in the wooden rails. The dowels are inserted in the rails to assemble a rack to various sizes. However, this rack must be disassembled, piece by piece, for compact storage.
Stackable modular wine racks are known. FIG. 16 illustrates a known wine rack assembled from individual bottle holder modules. These individual modules have been assembled into a 12 bottle rack. However, known modular wine racks are not collapsible and re-expandable. There remains a need for expandable and modular wine racks. In particular, there remains a need for an expandable and modular wine rack so that a wine store could display only the smaller formats, for example a 4, 6, 9 or 12 bottle expandable wine rack, but still assemble the a larger format, for example 16, 24, 36 and 48 bottle expandable wine racks, from the modular expandable smaller formats. For example, there is a need for an expandable modular wine rack such that the wine store, or the customer, could expand several, for example four, smaller expandable racks, for example four 6bottle wine racks, such as might be displayed in the wine store, and then modularly combine the smaller format wine racks into a larger format wine rack, for example a 24 bottle wine rack.